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Significance Of The Battle Of Somme

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The battle of the Somme was a battle fought by the French and British against the axis, Germans, in WW1 in a region of France which the river Somme runs through hence the name of the battle. This battle had great importance even though there was no geographical advantage to winning the battle it helped relieve pressure on the French in the Battle of Verdun.

The first day of this battle was the most devastating of all with the British bombarding the Germans with their barrage of bombs in hope to break down the Germans defence. The battle started on the 1st of July 1916 and on this day the British had 57,470 casualties, the worst in the British history. The British failed in trying to blow up the German defence and when they launched the second part of the attack they lost thousands of men. There were many reasons for this but the main reason was as the soldiers climbed out of there trenches the Germans, who had the upper ground, used their machine guns and it was like shooting practice on all the British soldiers. …show more content…

During World War 1 this type of warfare was invented which included a few important factors. The allies and the axis would both dig trenches roughly six feet deep opposite to each other. They would dig the trenches creating paths seven feet deep and six feet wide . These trenches would create cover from the men from shooting, allowing them to prepare for battle in safety. The idea of trench warfare was that you would be safe behind your line of defence and when the enemy was not expecting attack you would climb over the top of the trench and run across what is known as no-mans-land. No-mans-land was the strip of land between the allies and the axis trenches where millions of people were killed in WW1. In the battle of the Somme it was particularly evident how awful this warfare was with 19,240 British dying on the first

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